I can’t think of a single movie in which Jack Palance is anything other than great or completely bugfuck insane great. There’s a healthy helping of MST3K fodder in the years between Contempt and City Slickers, but I can’t think of anyone (maybe Donald Pleasence) who could take in otherwise crap movie and make it their own – not just chewing up the script, but the filmstock, the scenery, the extras, and anything else in site. Favorite insane Palance roles? Cocaine Cowboys (Palance as a rock band manager co-starring Andy Warhol as himself!), Che (Palance as Fidel Castro!), and two that did make it to MST3K: Angel’s Revenge & Outlaw. And of course as the eerie host of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
His IMDB bio entry is pretty amazing. Do they even make people like this anymore?
According to a website honoring movie celebrities that flew in B-24s, Palance burned his face severely while bailing out of a B-24 which was on fire during a training flight in Tucson in 1942 (that would probably have been the Davis-Monthan Army Air Corps base at that time) and after several surgeries was discharged in 1944. He is described as a “pilot in training”.
Speaks six languages: Ukrainian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, French and English.
Once fell asleep in his square during a taping of “The Hollywood Squares” (1966).
While an understudy to Marlon Brando in the Broadway production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Brando, who was into athletics, rigged up a punching bag in the theater’s boiler room and invited Jack to work out with him. One night, Jack threw a hard punch that missed the bag and landed square on Brando’s nose. The star had to be hospitalized and understudy Palance created his own big break by going on for Brando. Jack’s reviews as Stanley Kowalski helped get him a 20th Century-Fox contract.
Quote: “The only two things you can truly depend upon are gravity and greed.”
The obits all mention City Slickers and the Oscar speech, but if I had to pick one Palance role it would be the eccentric artist Rudi Cox in Bagdad Cafe who keeps trying to adequately paint the visions he sees in the desert. R.I.P.
Bagdad Cafe was just on last night and I was cruising past right towards the end. The clicker came to a screeching halt and it was just delicious to watch that final scene.